COUNTY CRICKET: Wickets continue to fall in Kent

The wisdom of playing Twenty20 bashes in and around four-day LV= Championship games may well be called into question after wickets continued to tumble in Kent’s LV= Championship clash with Derbyshire.

Having secured a first innings lead of 119, Kent were duly skittled for 112 in 36.4 overs and with a top score of 45 as Derbyshire’s Wayne White returned career-best bowling figures of 6-25 on a glorious day and on a blameless Canterbury pitch.

Only Daniel Bell-Drummond (45), Rob Key (18) and skipper, Sam Northeast, Kent’s last man out with 29, limped into double figures as the hosts, batting in seemingly ideal conditions, lost their last nine wickets for 49 runs in the space of 18 overs.

Needing 232 to win with more than seven sessions of the match remaining, Derbyshire lost Ben Slater (2) leg before to Matt Coles, but went in at tea on a reasonably respectable 70-1 and requiring a further 162 to land their second win of the season.

After the loss of 17 wickets on day one, Kent’s rookie fast bowler Ivan Thomas re-set the frenetic tone for the second day by mopping up Derbyshire’s three remaining first innings wickets in the space of his first three overs.

The 23-year-old right-armer had Poynton (19) caught at mid-wicket, Tom Taylor (1) caught in the cordon at third slip after he followed a lifting leg-cutter, then Palladino (27) gloved an attempted hook to give Kent’s understudy wicketkeeper Davies his maiden first-class catch behind the stumps.